ONLINE PRODUCT SEARCH AND PURCHASE BEHAVIOR OF GENERATION Y

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether gender differences exist in online product search and purchase behaviors. A survey of 116 undergraduate college students with questions regarding the types of products researched and purchased over the Internet, the type of information they looked for when researching the products, reasons for not purchasing products online, and reasons for returning products purchased over the Internet. While both male and female college students use the Internet to research and purchase products, the findings indicate that they differ significantly in the types of products they research and purchase online, the kinds of information they sought when researching products over the Internet, and their reasons for not purchasing a product online. Generation Y is an important consumer group that will heavily influence the future success of online retailers. The majority of college students are members of Generation Y and heavy users of the internet in general. Internet usage for this group has been examined for academic and educational purposes, but information regarding online shopping behaviors has been limited. In addition, gender differences have been observed as an influence on online shopping behavior, but there is a lack of clarity regarding gender differences in online shopping behaviors among Generation Y college students who have many opportunities to access the internet and spend a lot of time online

Market Orientation across Firm Performance Levels; Manager, Salesperson, and Customer Viewpoints

Market orientation and its impact on firm performance has been a topic of research interest for many years, yet research is still needed to extend this stream of literature in two important areas. Previous research has largely examined a company management perspective of market orientation, excluding the perspective of front line personnel, and that of customers. In addition, performance has been primarily assessed using subjective perceptions as opposed to objective measures. This study is intended to extend the literature beyond these traditional perspectives by examining market orientation from three different viewpoints including managers, salespeople, and customers as it relates to firm performance. Using these differing viewpoints, the research presented in this paper examines the difference in the level of market orientation across quartiles of actual branch performance, as well as the difference in level of perceived performance compared to actual performance. The research is based on data obtained from 111 business units of a Fortune 500 company. The results indicate that managers and salespeople had no perceived differences in the level of cultural market orientation across objective performance quartiles. Managers and salespeople had no perceived differences in any of the three measures of operational market orientation, and no perceived differences in their assessment of branch performance across actual performance quartiles. In contrast however, customers had a significant difference in their perception of cultural market orientation, but did not have a significant difference in their perception of the measures of operational market orientation. These results indicate that customers have a differing, and perhaps more accurate perception of market orientation than do company personnel

Low-Reynolds number swimming in gels

Many microorganisms swim through gels, materials with nonzero zero-frequency elastic shear modulus, such as mucus. Biological gels are typically heterogeneous, containing both a structural scaffold (network) and a fluid solvent. We analyze the swimming of an infinite sheet undergoing transverse traveling wave deformations in the "two-fluid" model of a gel, which treats the network and solvent as two coupled elastic and viscous continuum phases. We show that geometric nonlinearities must be incorporated to obtain physically meaningful results. We identify a transition between regimes where the network deforms to follow solvent flows and where the network is stationary. Swimming speeds can be enhanced relative to Newtonian fluids when the network is stationary. Compressibility effects can also enhance swimming velocities. Finally, microscopic details of sheet-network interactions influence the boundary conditions between the sheet and network. The nature of these boundary conditions significantly impacts swimming speeds.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, submitted to EP

\u3csup\u3e1\u3c/sup\u3eH, \u3csup\u3e13\u3c/sup\u3eC, and \u3csup\u3e15\u3c/sup\u3eN NMR assignments for the \u3ci\u3eBacillus subtilis\u3c/i\u3e yndB START domain

The steroidogenic acute regulatory-related lipid transfer (START) domain is found in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes, with putative functions including signal transduction, transcriptional regulation, GTPase activation and thioester hydrolysis. Here we report the near complete 1H, 15N and 13C backbone and side chain NMR resonance assignments for the Bacillus subtilis START domain protein yndB

Unbiased taxonomic annotation of metagenomic samples

The classification of reads from a metagenomic sample using a reference taxonomy is usually based on first mapping the reads to the reference sequences and then classifying each read at a node under the lowest common ancestor of the candidate sequences in the reference taxonomy with the least classification error. However, this taxonomic annotation can be biased by an imbalanced taxonomy and also by the presence of multiple nodes in the taxonomy with the least classification error for a given read. In this article, we show that the Rand index is a better indicator of classification error than the often used area under thereceiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve andF-measure for both balanced and imbalanced reference taxonomies, and we also address the second source of bias by reducing the taxonomic annotation problem for a whole metagenomic sample to a set cover problem, for which a logarithmic approximation can be obtained in linear time and an exact solution can be obtained by integer linear programming. Experimental results with a proof-of-concept implementation of the set cover approach to taxonomic annotation in a next release of the TANGO software show that the set cover approach further reduces ambiguity in the taxonomic annotation obtained with TANGO without distorting the relative abundance profile of the metagenomic sample.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Beating patterns of filaments in viscoelastic fluids

Many swimming microorganisms, such as bacteria and sperm, use flexible flagella to move through viscoelastic media in their natural environments. In this paper we address the effects a viscoelastic fluid has on the motion and beating patterns of elastic filaments. We treat both a passive filament which is actuated at one end, and an active filament with bending forces arising from internal motors distributed along its length. We describe how viscoelasticity modifies the hydrodynamic forces exerted on the filaments, and how these modified forces affect the beating patterns. We show how high viscosity of purely viscous or viscoelastic solutions can lead to the experimentally observed beating patterns of sperm flagella, in which motion is concentrated at the distal end of the flagella

Achiral symmetry breaking and positive Gaussian modulus lead to scalloped colloidal membranes

In the presence of a non-adsorbing polymer, monodisperse rod-like particles assemble into colloidal membranes, which are one rod-length thick liquid-like monolayers of aligned rods. Unlike 3D edgeless bilayer vesicles, colloidal monolayer membranes form open structures with an exposed edge, thus presenting an opportunity to study physics of thin elastic sheets. Membranes assembled from single-component chiral rods form flat disks with uniform edge twist. In comparison, membranes comprised of mixture of rods with opposite chiralities can have the edge twist of either handedness. In this limit disk-shaped membranes become unstable, instead forming structures with scalloped edges, where two adjacent lobes with opposite handedness are separated by a cusp-shaped point defect. Such membranes adopt a 3D configuration, with cusp defects alternatively located above and below the membrane plane. In the achiral regime the cusp defects have repulsive interactions, but away from this limit we measure effective long-ranged attractive binding. A phenomenological model shows that the increase in the edge energy of scalloped membranes is compensated by concomitant decrease in the deformation energy due to Gaussian curvature associated with scalloped edges, demonstrating that colloidal membranes have positive Gaussian modulus. A simple excluded volume argument predicts the sign and magnitude of the Gaussian curvature modulus that is in agreement with experimental measurements. Our results provide insight into how the interplay between membrane elasticity, geometrical frustration and achiral symmetry breaking can be used to fold colloidal membranes into 3D shapes.Comment: Main text: 25 pages, 6 figures. Supplementary information: 6 pages, 6 figure

Structure and Function of Human DnaJ Homologue Subfamily A Member 1 (DNAJA1) and Its Relationship to Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer has a dismal 5 year survival rate of 5.5% that has not been improved over the past 25 years despite an enormous amount of effort. Thus, there is an urgent need to identify truly novel yet druggable protein targets for drug discovery. The human protein DnaJ homologue subfamily A member 1 (DNAJA1) was previously shown to be downregulated 5- fold in pancreatic cancer cells and has been targeted as a biomarker for pancreatic cancer, but little is known about the specific biological function for DNAJA1 or the other members of the DnaJ family encoded in the human genome. Our results suggest the overexpression of DNAJA1 suppresses the stress response capabilities of the oncogenic transcription factor, c-Jun, and results in the diminution of cell survival. DNAJA1 likely activates a DnaK protein by forming a complex that suppresses the JNK pathway, the hyperphosphorylation of c-Jun, and the anti-apoptosis state found in pancreatic cancer cells. A high-quality nuclear magnetic resonance solution structure of the J-domain of DNAJA1 combined with a bioinformatics analysis and a ligand affinity screen identifies a potential DnaK binding site, which is also predicted to overlap with an inhibitory binding site, suggesting DNAJA1 activity is highly regulated